HYÄRYLLISTÄ – THIRTY-THREE YEARS OF ARTFUL PRODUCTIVITY, Juha Heikki Tihinen PhD, 2025
ART ABOUT EVERYDAY UNREALITY, Martta Heikkilä PhD, 2015
JUHA HEIKKI TIHINEN PHD
20.1.2025
HYÄRYLLISTÄ – THIRTY-THREE YEARS OF ARTFUL PRODUCTIVITY
Hyäryllistä* is a three-artist collective formed by Jouko Korkeasaari, Sari Koski-Vähälä and Heli Kurunsaari. The trio held their first exhibition in 1992. What has sustained their motivation all these years? Or perhaps ‘motivation’ is the wrong word, since we are talking about an artistic collaboration and not a corporate incentive scheme. Beyond just collaborating, the group might be described as ‘working together’ in the truest sense of the word, since each of the three artists brings their own special energy to their collective practice.
The group’s name – which translates as ‘useful’ – takes a playful dig at the concept of utility, a controversial notion especially in art. The group has no official founding date, nor does it have a manifesto or programme, choosing instead to follow its own anarchistic logic. Suffice to say that the three artists have together created a body of work that is distinctly different in its approach from their individual artistic paths. Over the decades, the three artists have challenged and refined the logic of their respective solo projects through their long-term collaborative practice, which has proved both successful and highly original.
In her essay Freud’s Toys, the artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) describes the artefacts in Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) collection of antiquities are mere “toys”, whereas art represents to her “reality”: “The work of art has an absolute value”. What Bourgeois meant was that she was less interested in Freud’s aesthetic eye than in psychoanalysis and what it could do for artists. Reflecting on the group’s work, I begin to glean a sense of what Bourgeois was getting at. The trio collects assorted recycled materials and transforms them into ‘reality’ – that is, art. Their assemblages of discarded objects invoke not nostalgia, but something tangible yet also elusive at the same time. Their art speaks directly to the unconscious, dredging up a wide spectrum of thoughts and feelings.
The unconscious, being ignorant of time, does not differentiate between past and present, and assigns all phenomena with equal value. The same is true of art, in which disparate elements are freely combined and no individual component is more important than any other. Only the result determines the ultimate meaningfulness of the artwork, and the quality or quantity of its individual components is irrelevant. The viewer should in fact be more interested in an artwork’s experiential impact than its meaning, since ‘meaningfulness’ is a measure of utility, whereas experientiality is pure feeling from which no utilitarian gain can be extracted. Experientiality indeed inherently lies at the very core of what constitutes meaningfulness in art, but this often tends to be marginalized, lest art’s undemocratic power to evoke life-changing experiences be exposed.
The collective has always taken a special interest in the artistic margins. In the 1990s, their collaboration centred on snapshots and performances, after which they founded an artist-run gallery/workspace. Recycling and neo-materialism have since emerged as focal elements in their recent practice. Their new exhibition at Forum Box in February 2025 will feature recycled needlepoint canvases endowed with a sense of temporality through the addition of effects resembling scenery viewed from a train window. The collective will also present a multi-part sculptural installation and smaller, three-dimensional object assemblages. Their latest exhibition shows how each artist’s background as a painter finds expression in the flexible logic of their collaboration, which is rooted in painting traditions and focused on dialogue with the material and the artist’s unique handprint. When working as a group, each of the three artists steps out of their respective comfort zones, surrendering themselves to the uncertainty of exploring the margins, which in turn pushes them towards unknown frontiers. The group’s team engagement celebrates the power of collaboration and affirms that unknown territories are best explored as a collective effort – herein lies both the key lesson and guiding principle of their artistic practice.
Juha-Heikki Tihinen, PhD
*Hyäryllistä is a southern Ostrobothnian dialectical form of the Finnish word hyödyllistä, meaning ‘useful’
(Translation from Finnish to English Silja Kudel)
MARTTA HEIKKILÄ PHD
29.9.2015
ART ABOUT EVERYDAY UNREALITY
Not everything is always how it seems. In artwork, this is apparent: when we encounter a stuffed grouse or a pile of braided hair, the sight opens your eyes up to somewhere where the things previously considered obvious suddenly gain new, unforeseen nuances. The details of the works begin to unravel in all their mysteriousness and lead us to unexpected connotations. When the pieces have several makers, does this effect gain ever more new and multifold edges?
The members of the Hyäryllistä group met in 1990 when Jouko Korkeasaari, Heli Kurunsaari and Harri Lukkari were studying in the Liminka School of Art in North Ostrobothnia. The name ”Hyäryllistä” stands for ”something useful”. A little later the group was joined by Sari Koski-Vähälä who also studied in the same school.
After finishing the Liminka School of Art, the members of the group scattered to different cities: Kurunsaari and Koski-Vähälä continued their studies at the Lahti Institute of Fine Arts and Korkeasaari and Lukkari in the Turku School of Fine Arts. After graduating from Lahti, Kurunsaari and Koski-Vähälä also moved to live and work in Turku. Harri Lukkari was involved in the group until 2008.
Hyäryllistä, which has been up and running for 23 years, must be one of the longest-surviving artist groups in Finland. It has not only brought together like-minded artists or artists who have adapted a common genre. Differing from many other groups of artists, Hyäryllistä has produced collaborated works from the very beginning whilst each of its members have also been working on their own projects. In fact, the thing that has held the group together has been the fact that Hyäryllistä has changed together: the outcome of collaboration has adapted to the changes in circumstances and methods.
When Hyäryllistä was established, the medium of all its members was painting. One after another, however, they all left painting behind and moved on to other means of expression.
In the 1990’s and still in the early 21st Century the group was inspired by pop art as well as collages combining various methods but other techniques such as video and performances were also used. Nowadays Hyäryllistä cooperates in making installations that combine various objects and woodcuts. Each artist brings their own touch to these pieces of Gesamtkunstwerk. Despite the fact that there are several artists involved in the creative process, the pieces aim to be seamless entities. This is why there is a certain tension between the separate nature of the working process and the unity of the pieces: the artists are seeking the sum of the parts by bringing together polarities and contradictions, concealed in both the working methods as well as in handling the material.
ACTIVITIES AND EXHIBITIONS
The name Hyäryllistä –”something useful” – originally came from Heli Kurunsaari’s quote ”We should do something useful.” The name, of course, seems a paradox in the sense that many consider art to be the very antonym of usefulness. According to a modernistic paradigm deriving from as far back as the Age of Enlightenment, art is a matter which needs to serve nothing but aesthetic needs – and should art be of some use, this will be hidden in the dignified existence of art itself. These days the name Hyäryllistä has a new kind of ring as the world of art has been met with demands that art should be of use to the wellbeing of individuals and enhance their performance for the good of the society and the economy. These demands, however, have not altered the way the Hyäryllistä group works as it is focused on making art on its own terms and has shown itself to be useful in many a way – for example by offering opportunities for the activities of others, too.
After the artists had moved to Turku, they rented business premises in the city centre on Aninkaistenkatu, into which they established their shared studio. They called the space Studio Hyäryllistä and at times it also served as an alternative exhibition space and as a meeting place for the artists and their audience. Many of the people involved well remember especially the exhibition openings which brought people together. The openings at the studio became events that could be seen as well as heard in the Turku art scene. The group, the studio and the openings became ”Gesamtkunstwerk as a stream of human encounters”, as Pekka Luhta defined in 2001.
During exhibitions, the street-side space of Studio Hyäryllistä was cleared out for artwork and projects. Performances and concerts were often given in the studio. The shop windows on the other hand were in exhibition use all year round which gave passers-by the chance to see art straight from the street, from outside the exhibition space.
All in all the Studio and its Fastarts window gallery featured more than 100 artists from Finland as well as from overseas during its 7 years of running. Many Finnish as well as international visual artists who have since become well-known held significant exhibitions at the Studio in the early stages of their careers. These included people such as video artist Salla Tykkä, painter Janne Räisänen, sculptor Kim Simonsson as well as Visa Suonpää, known for the artist pair IC-98. Françoise Cactus, the singer of a German electro pop band Stereo Total, held her first art exhibition at the Studio in 2000. The band also performed there during Cactus’s exhibition.
Studio Hyäryllistä functioned in Turku until 2004 when the group members moved to Helsinki. Over the last 10 years Hyäryllistä has taken part in bigger group exhibitions as well as held exhibitions of its own, recently for example at Lönnström Art Museum in Rauma and in the Kluuvi Gallery in Helsinki. The entity in Lapua Art Museum in the autumn of 2015 is the most extensive of all the group’s exhibitions to date.
The Hyäryllistä group began to hold its own exhibitions more and more often from the late 1990’s. At this point, bringing various items together and ready-made techniques gradually became the direction and medium of the group’s working process. Assemblages were selected as the primary means of expression, and this is the genre that even today can be used to describe the joint artwork of the group.
At first, influences from kitsch and pop art in particular could be seen in the works of the group. For example the gaudy collection of items titled Mis recuerdos (My memories, 2001) at the Sangre de Poro exhibition ended up with knick-knacks from trips to the South, the abandoned yet shared memories from holidays in Spain. These items found at flea markets came together in an absurd collage. The installation titled Punainen tupa ja… (A Red Cottage and…), on the other hand, probed the relationship of everyday life and photograph in the culture based increasingly on the use of images. This was artwork which Hyäryllistä put together for the Off Skene exhibition at the Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki in the summer of 2002. This exhibition was the 4th Finnish photography triennial. Two years later they took part in the Se mikä on tavallista (Concerning the commonplace) exhibition at Turku Art Museum. On display was a photographic installation the shape of a small room and assemblage Arki kultaa muistot (Memories grow sweeter with everyday life). The topics of the artwork touched on the significance of roots and homestead, environment and history but also motion and continuity in life.
WORK, MEMORIES AND MYSTICISM OF THE EVERYDAY
What is significant to the activities of the Hyäryllistä group is the concept of continuity, for each of its exhibitions is based on previous ones. The material of the pieces is recycled into new purposes based on the need and situation. At the same time the artists’ ideas and works grow from one another and feed one another when the group refines ideas and takes them further. There is a sense of motion generated from the way the pieces of art refer to one another.
Each of the artists works on their own pieces in their own studios as well as on the group’s collaborated pieces and exhibitions – often simultaneously. The working process could be described as coming together and being together, sharing experiences and the process of creating new experiences. The process comes about from communication and it is natural that the working process tests everyone’s own thinking, preferences as well as methods. Questioning of views is needed in order to finally weave the thoughts into being a part of a joint piece of art. That is why in their work the artists do not seek a single truth or uniform experiences and values as such as it would inevitably only lead to compromises. The results of the work are more multi-dimensional and multi-valued entities in which each view has its own function – the creation of polarities and contradictions.
The objective is to show how everyday things and also the larger structures of the society can be seen differently. The works give clues for how to question everyday life, accustomed patterns of thinking and routines. ”Pattern-like thoughts may often be derived more from dominant norms rather than one’s own reasoning”, Sari Koski-Vähälä says. Thus the political nature of the Hyäryllistä works comes from the artists’ own relationship to everyday life.
In the group interaction is essential and it includes making with hands as well as the thinking that derives from the creation process. Thus, working together is not primarily theoretical by nature – on the other hand the Hyäryllistä works can be interpreted as conceptual art for in their works, the artists consider the existence and methods of art. They construct their works from recognisable everyday items, from unidentified nameless pieces and from ”artistic” parts made especially for the project. Hyäryllistä does seem to be asking which of all the material surrounding us can be turned into material for art. To what extent can the shapes in the works transform and what separates art from the rest of the world and life? The borderlines between reality and imagination are questioned when the works show that both art as well as life is about concrete fact but also about magic that surpasses the commonplace.
The installations and assemblages of the Hyäryllistä group awaken a sense of reality and associations produced by imagination. At the same time the works refer to art history: the origins of assemblages can be sought in the tradition of surrealism that started in the 1920’s. The word ”surrealism” literally stands for what is hidden above the ordinary but also in dreams and in the unconscious. Surrealists utilised the collage technique the principle of which they adapted from the collection of prosaic poems titled Les Chants de Maldoror (1868) by the French author Comte de Lautréamont. In this, Lautréamont defines the idea of a collage: the combination of surprising elements previously unknown to one another is supposed to result in an entity that is ”as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella”.
In addition to the Surrealists, the method of combination was also adapted by the Dadaists and Cubists in the early 20th Century. Thanks to the collage technique it seemed like the work of an artist were based on making associations – in reality, however, the associations are left to the imagination of the viewer. The items are brought together by a kind of a dream logic, a certainty that is not limited to reason but on the contrary goes as far as insanity.
In the history of the recent decades of art, the tradition of surrealism has manifested in the bringing together of objects and ideas, and many of the Hyäryllistä works are also based on associations. A good example of this are the items from the Kluuvi Gallery exhibition Mummovuuduu (Grannyvoodoo) in 2014: non-functioning telephones, stuffed animals, birds’ nests, pig’s trotters, inside-out paintings, high heels and large clay balls. You can also see the same surreal atmosphere in Heli Kurunsaari’s woodcuts – perceptions of life the oddness of which is revealed to the viewer.
The selection of objects is a result of a similar process to memories and the mind: the associations between different things arise unpredictably, and often these associations remain mysteries even to ourselves. Yet it is possible to perceive that the selection of items is made on definite artistic and aesthetic grounds: colours, shapes and materials are simultaneously seemingly random and carefully deliberated – the items may be worn, dead, dried up, fabric, wooden, clay, intact, broken, useful or useless.
RELICS OF LIFE AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MATERIAL
So how is the relationship between the mundane and a fantasy, surrealism? The artists of the Hyäryllistä group emphasise the surprising dimensions of everyday life yet for a viewer, the relationship between the day-to-day and its curious reverse side may work the other way round: first the works are viewed as aesthetic objects, and it is not until after the initial amazement that one begins to gradually see what the works are comprised of – often of very ordinary items.
Combinations and new contexts produce unprecedented entities. Behind the artists’ method of collection and refinement, you can partly detect traces of the arte povera tradition originating from the 1960’s Italy. The subdued and earthy colour scale of the Hyäryllistä works may also be connected to the same tradition. Nevertheless, the pieces are by no means ”poor” but, on the contrary, ample in a manner that has not been witnessed before.
Many of the items used in the Hyäryllistä works direct the viewers’ thoughts to exotism, to ancient ethnographic discoveries, to refuge and plants washed ashore and to animals. For his own works Jouko Korkeasaari makes dolls, often with limbs missing. They seem to lead the viewer to witness mysterious ceremonies, voodoo and other forms of secret worship. Therefore the items are like parts of two different realities: on one hand of art, on the other of the imaginary world of cults. For instance, in the group’s installation titled Tuhkat pesästä (Squirrelled away, 2009) they seem to be located on the shoreline of art and non-art, from where the sea flushes out many types of organic material: sea shells, fungus-like formations, seeds, parts of plants and unrecognisable fruit. These are combined with wooden spatulas and doll body parts which were already favoured by surrealists like the German Hans Bellmer in their works in the 1930’s. Yet the abundance of items does not lead to chaos but everything is carefully hung, even symmetrical, like the assemblage constructed around a dresser in Korkeasaari’s installation Elämä on luopumista (Life is letting go, 2014). In the recent history of Finnish art, Korkeasaari’s assemblages can be compared to the collages of Ismo Kajander, Juhani Harri and Kari Cavén, utilising used and found items. It is these very combinations of objects that stop the viewer and make the ordinary extraordinary and surprising.
The significance of traces and relics can also be very concrete indeed. In the works of her series titled Sagrada familia (2006–2014) Sari Koski-Vähälä uses materials such as chewed chewing gum, dried pieces of ham and human hair. Like the annual rings on a tree, the hair contains information about their previous owner’s entire personal history: genetics, nutrition, minerals. Saliva absorbed into a porous mass of chewing gum has the same qualities. The traces of corporality make the substance both intriguing as well as repulsive.
Memories and relics are tied to time, and it is objects that are the concrete counterparts for memories. They give form to the time passed. Art eternalises things that are doomed to disappear just like many objects have already fallen out of use and into history – an example of this is the row of landline telephones without connection to the rest of the world in the piece titled Virattomat (The Displaced, 2014). One may think that artistic material contains a memory of its own that includes the purpose of the items, their old and their new use. These are altered when brought together and also combined with new parts specially made for the purposes of artwork. Artists create images that could be anyone’s memories, as if they were the ground forms of memories.
Repetition, also, is part of the working process. Thanks to repetition, things gain meanings through new connections; Sari Koski-Vähälä, for example, has been forming the foam balls of her piece Corales pétreos since 2009. At this point, old mattresses have turned into thousands of balls. In addition to repetition, the significance of the time perspective can be seen in items that have been moved from one place to another. This however does not mean that the significance of moving would be random or indifferent for the works are installations by nature and thus tied to their own carefully deliberated spaces.
The Hyäryllistä works could be called post-image art for the installations are characterised by imagelessness, colourlessness and silence. Heli Kurunsaari attaches her woodcuts to the space thus created, providing them the aspect of image and representation. This, in turn, results in an entity with tensions and questions: what are we looking at and how?
If the group had an unofficial slogan, it could be ”memories grow sweeter with everyday life”. The works of the Hyäryllistä artists show that the ordinary and the mundane harbour a chance for something irregular, peculiar and unexpected. Perhaps it is for this very reason why art in its seeming uselessness is in fact very useful indeed: it generates reality and memories as well as shows our relationship with the world to be mediated, indirect and layered – and thus all but obvious. Art shows how memories grow sweeter with everyday life but also how it is possible for everyday life to grow sweeter with memories.
(Translation from Finnish to English Jenni Gray)